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This technical brief provides an overview of regional trends in child labour elimination, progress toward global commitments, policy responses, and persistent gaps across subregions and sectors.
The Government of India has passed several legislations to safeguard the rights of the child workers and to protect them from exploitation by their employer. An act to prohibit the engagement of children in certain employments and to regulate working conditions was passed on 23rd December 1986 as Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act,1986. The act was later amended and was passed by Rajya Sabha on 20th July 2016 regulating the working conditions of the young persons and completely prohibiting engagement of children below 14 years in any employment except that of the family business after school. Allowing children under 14 years to help in the family business and limiting the scope of the definition of “hazardous” by reducing the list of hazardous processes and occupations, is likely to affect children’s rights to learn, play and grow. Section 3 (2) (a) of the amended act is in direct conflict with section 3 (1), where the latter prohibits the engagement of children in any employment the former promotes. The enunciation of any law is meaningless if proper observance of that percept of law is not forthcoming. Further, a detailed study of the act reveals lacunae in various other provisions which exposes both adolescent workers and child workers to exploitation. The present legislative note addresses the core issues in the amended law which looks progressive at glance but suffers from flaws.
Samreen Fatima
AbstractFunding decisions to support vulnerable children are tied to child labour statistics, hence the importance of an accurate measurement. The author analyses whether the type of respondent plays an important role in explaining variations in child labour statistics. Using data from two sites in Tanzania, the analysis shows that “whom we ask” matters considerably when estimating the prevalence of child labour. The results suggest that prevalence increases by approximately 35 to 65 per cent when using child self‐reports rather than proxy reports. This bias affects 14 to 31 per cent of the sample, depending on the indicator. Discrepancies decrease as the child ages and increase if proxy attitudes demonstrate opposition to child labour.
Sarah A. JANZEN
Abstract This chapter presents the evidence on the impact of incomplete financial and insurance markets on the supply of child labour. Shocks substantially alter household decisions. In particular, a negative shock increases the probability that a child will work. Coupled with evidence from other research that child labour shows a high degree of persistence as in the case of the Rwanda genocide, this finding highlights the importance of protection from shocks. Risk-reduction schemes also have a beneficial and substantial effect on child work as, confirmed by experimental evidence regarding increased access to health insurance. However, shocks might also alter the returns to child labour and lead households to increase child labour in the presence of a positive shock. Such changes in the incentives facing the household must be kept in mind when designing actual policies.
Alessandro Cigno, Furio C. Rosati
The term child labour reflects the engagement of children in prohibited work and, more generally, in types of work to be eliminated as socially and morally undesirable as guided by national legislation, the ILO Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138), and the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182). A child is a person who is under 18 years of age according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child 1990 (hereinafter referred to as the CRC) and the Children Act 2013 of Bangladesh (hereinafter referred to as the Children Act). Thus, child labour in a generic sense means work done by in any establishment by a person under 18 years of age. The 18th International Conference of Labour Statisticians took note of the fact that not all children who are working may be considered to be in child labour slated for abolition. What this means is that, child labour has permissible limits, such limits are constituted and considered on a variety of factors including socio-economic realities.
Ahmed Ragib Chowdhury
Abstract According to UNICEF in 2022 about 700 million people had no or very limited access to water and roughly the same number did not have access to electricity. This chapter discusses the effects of access to basic services on the use of the children’s time. If households devote substantial time to gathering water and fuel, then the opportunity-cost of children’s time rises. The empirical analysis is difficult because of the complexities of identifying a counterfactual. However, the results presented indicate that access to basic services has a relevant effect on child labour, with the obvious policy implication that, as well as providing schools and health, governments concerned about child labour and school attendance should give a high priority to these basic facilities.
Alessandro Cigno, Furio C. Rosati
Abstract There appears to be a linear (although by no means perfect) relationship between the amount of time children spend with adults in sport settings and the harms experienced by so many young athletes. Children who are professional or national team athletes, and those in the pipeline towards professional and high performance sport, are likely to spend the greatest amounts of time with adults in those sport settings. This chapter outlines how sport participation has become so work-like for so many children who demonstrate talent in a sport. This can reach a point where some young athletes under the age of 18, or even under the age of 16, spend more time with coaches and training for sport than they spend in school or with their parents. Critiques of the system of early talent identification/early specialisation/intensive training and competition for children are followed by a summary of the types of harms experienced by children in that system. The specificity of sport and the autonomy of sport organisations protects those organisations from responsibility or blame for the harms experienced by children. This chapter concludes with a call to exempt children from the autonomy of sport organisations and to establish recognition of children as a protected class in sports.
Peter Donnelly
Children are the greatest gift to humanity. Childhood is an important stage of human development, because it holds the potential of the future of any society. Children all over the world are engaged in a great number of activities known as work. These activities can be like helping in family members at home to physically dangerous and morally objectionable activity. Child Labour is a complex and a controversial issue it is a problem faced by us from many decades and is a challenge for many developing countries and developed countries of the world. Many countries have enacted various laws and have taken serious steps to eradicate child labour, yet is still a widespread problem throughout the world. India is not an exception. As per the report, India ranks among the top nations of the world for the employment of child labour. The cause of child labour in India is a very complex and deep-rooted issue. Poverty is the main cause of child labour in India and child labour in India is found in both urban and rural areas. Although many poor families struggle for a better life and this forces the children of these families to do work in order to increase the family income and become a bread earner of his family. Like other countries of the world, India has laws on child labour in order to bring reform and end all forms of child labour in the country, but the ground reality is still very different in nature. The objective of this paper is to make a critical analysis of child labour in India.
Shreyansh Anand
Abstract This chapter is devoted to a review of the impact of different policies and programmes actually implemented to address child labour with a bearing on child labour. It looks at legislation, transfers (both conditional and unconditional), public works, microcredit and livelihood programmes, and other forms of intervention. While the jury is still out, as sound impact evaluations are not so abundant, the results are far from showing an outright success. In the majority of cases the effects on child labour are small and often short-lived. In several cases the policies generate unwanted consequences that actually lead to an increase in child labour. Apparently the policies implemented often did not give enough consideration to the complex set of incentives that determine the decisions of the household relative to the allocation of children’s time.
Alessandro Cigno, Furio C. Rosati
Abstract Although the majority of children work in family farms or businesses, both the status of the labour market and the structure of production have a role to play. Cyclical movements in the local adult labour market have an impact on the number of children working. The effects are differentiated by level of household income, area of residence, and age. Also, the presence of relatively child-labour-intensive industries affects the evolution of child labour. As the productive structure of the economy changes, and child intensive industries become less relevant, child labour decreases. An important role in this context can be played by international trade. As the country moves up along the so-called ‘value-added ladder’, relatively child-labour-intensive industries are likely to lose importance, and this will contribute to the reduction of child labour.
Alessandro Cigno, Furio C. Rosati
